Fig. 1: Adipose OLFM2 is adipocyte-specific and opposite to obesity.

a Gene expression dynamics (microarray) of Olfactomedin 1–4 (OLFM1-4) in the SC adipose tissue of 16 women with obesity after weight loss¹². b OLFM2 gene expression levels (real time-PCR) in an extended sample of 24 female patients with obesity following bariatric surgery, and 24 age-matched women without obesity (BMI < 30 kg/m²). See in Table S3 for additional details. Boxplots show expression of SC OLFM1-4 in c 50 female patients with obesity at the baseline, and after 2 (n = 49) and 5 (n = 38) years of surgery-induced weight loss (post-WL), and in 28 age-matched women without obesity (NO)¹³, and in d 14 healthy volunteers before and 24 h after an intravenous bolus of 3 ng/kg LPS¹⁸, as retrieved from publicly available microarray datasets. See expression of others biomarkers in Supplementary Fig. S1b, c. OLFM3 gene expression was not detectable in the dataset of ref. ¹⁸. RMA, Robust multiarray analysis. Below, bean plots show OLFM2 gene expression (real time-PCR) in e SC and f omental (OM) adipose tissues of an independent sample of subjects with and without obesity, while g scatter dot plots show the association of SC (upper) and OM (lower panel) OLFM2 with BMI (further details in Tables S4 and S5). Individual values for men (blue) and women (red) are provided in gender glyphs. h Additional scatter dot plots associate OLFM2 with biomarkers of adipocyte function. Two-sided Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients (r) and p values are shown for each association. i OLFM2 transcript levels were also measured (real time-PCR) in stroma-vascular cells (SVC) and mature adipocytes (MA) isolated from paired SC and OM samples of adipose tissue, biopsied from 12 women with obesity while being bypassed, and in j the single-cell RNA sequencing of 14 individuals with obesity undergoing bariatric surgery, as explained in ref. ²⁰. RPKM, Reads per kilobase per million reads. The box plots show center line at the median, upper and lower lines bound at 75th and 25th percentiles, respectively, and whiskers at minimum and maximum values. Statistical significance was determined by two-tailed Fisher’s exact t-test (cross-sectional comparisons), or two-tailed paired t-test (longitudinal changes). r.u. stands for relative units. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01 (two-sided Student’s test). Source data are provided as a Source data file.